Shownotes:
In this transformative episode of the pod, David shares his journey and explores the profound impact of gratitude on life and success. Get ready for an inspiring discussion that will challenge you to rethink the power of a simple 'thank you' and how it can reshape your path to abundance. Don't miss these invaluable insights – tune in and discover the blueprint for success with gratitude!
Thrive Global Article:
About Our Guest:
David Meltzer is a legendary sports executive and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire.He is one of the world's top Entrepreneurs, Investors and Business coaches. David has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
David is the Executive Producer of the Apple TV series 2 Minute Drill and Office Hours. He is also the executive producer of Entrepreneur’s #1 digital business show, Elevator Pitch. David is featured in many books, movies, and TV shows such as World’s Greatest Motivators, Think and Grow Rich and Beyond the Secret featured on Netflix. His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing… VALUE. In all his content, and communication that’s exactly what you’ll receive.
Connect with and learn from David:
Complimentary Signed Book:
David invites us to connect with him via email at david@dmeltzer.com and you can even request a copy of his book, which he generously offers to send for free, covering the cost of the book and shipping.
Free Weekly Training:
Discover David’s 24-year tradition of impactful Friday trainings by contacting him for virtual attendance information.
Explore More Resources:
Visit David’s website at dmeltzer.com to delve into more of his wisdom and offerings.
FOLLOW David:
Website – dmeltzer.com
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About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello friends. I am so excited to share today's episode with you. I had the honor, privilege, and joy of chatting with David Meltzer, who is a legendary sports executive, and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports and Entertainment Agency, which was actually the inspiration for the movie, Jerry Maguire, one of my favorites. He is one of the world's top entrepreneurs, investors, and business coaches.
David has been recognized by variety magazine as their Sports Humanitarian of the Year and awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. And it doesn't stop ,there, friends. David is also the executive producer of the Apple TV series, 2 Minute Drill and Office Hours. He is the executive producer of Entrepreneur's #1, digital business show, Elevator Pitch. David is featured in many books, movies and TV shows such as World's Greatest Motivators, Think and Grow Rich, and Beyond the Secret featured on Netflix. His life's mission is to empower over 1 billion people to be happy. He definitely made me happy in this conversation. This simple, yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing- value. In all his content and communication, that is exactly what you will receive.
You are going to love this episode, and I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to Stacy Ross Cohen, who has also been a guest on this podcast. Thank you Stacy for connecting me with David. I am so excited to share his message and his mission.
And now onto the episode.
David Meltzer: Hello!
Lainie Rowell: Hello! Welcome!
David Meltzer: Hi, thank you for doing this.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you for this time with me.
David Meltzer: I appreciate the opportunity for this interview and look forward to helping people thrive.
Lainie Rowell: In your book, Connected to Goodness, you say the easiest way to change your life is simply saying thank you. You cannot over say these two words. And with that, I just want to kick this off with, what does gratitude mean to you? How is it playing out in your life?
And how did you come to make this a priority?
David Meltzer: Of course. Well, there's a lot to unravel there. So gratitude is perspective. And the perspective that it is, is the ability or capability of finding the light, the love, and the lessons in everything. To give meaning to everything that we see that's aligned with where we want to be or better.
And in the context of gratitude, which, by the way, only takes 0.1 seconds and is free probably one of the simplest ways to have the greatest impact on your life, but yet I learned a valuable lesson about gratitude as I try to share a new perspective of graciousness, of finding the light, the love, and the lessons is that the simple things to do are unfortunately simple not to do.
And when I started to take stock in gratitude, something that I learned by the time I was three from my grandparents and my parents and all the other significant individuals who were constantly telling me to say thank you and to be thankful. Whether it was aligned with holidays or not, it was ingrained in my value system.
I didn't understand the significance of it or the difficulty in actually being grateful, even though it takes 0.1 seconds and is absolutely free. When I learned that the simple things to do are unfortunately simple not to do, it all made sense. And so I started to raise my awareness of not only all simple things to do, but the simple things that had the most impact in my life.
Still to this day, as I have surrounded myself with the greatest billionaires, millionaires, entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, entertainers, and thought leaders, from Deepak Chopra to Cameron Diaz to Leigh Steinberg to Warren Moon to whoever it may be, every single one of them agree that gratitude is the most powerful thing in the world, which is why I wanted to come on to this interview, because you and I share that same vision as well, and we want to teach people how easy and important it is to say thank you, and I think it's easy to start with saying thank you before we go to bed, and when we wake up, in fact, I speak all around the world and have millions of followers and millions of views now and I constantly say the same thing.
Be kind to your future self and do good deeds. Say thank you before you go to bed and when you wake up and I promise you, your life will aggregate, accelerate, and compound its outcomes exponentially better than you even can imagine. And the faith that's intrinsic in gratitude is that we are part of an omniscient, all powerful, all knowing source, whether it's your religion, philosophy, theory, spirituality, that guides you to believing in this omniscient, all powerful, all knowing source that loves you, protects you, and promotes you more than your mom.
At its core, the spine of all positivity, lies your ability to find the light, the love, and the lessons, the meaning that is aligned with where you want to be or better, with the faith that you're being protected and promoted and loved, even if it comes in a form that isn't anticipated, isn't planned, isn't expected, or even seems to be pain. I'm someone who lost over a hundred million dollars and went bankrupt while I was running the most notable sports agency in the world, while I had access to what even billionaires couldn't afford.
And I will tell you when it occurred, I didn't have the capability of finding the light, the love and the lessons. Of course, initially I saw it as punishment, but it's the speed in which I was able to transform that punishment to protection and promotion. And here I am 15 years later, making more money, helping more people and having more fun because of the lessons I learned, the light and love that I found in one of the most challenging circumstances and seeing that pain, that struggle, that challenge, that failure, that mistake, that void, that shortage, that obstacle in my life promoted and propelled me.
Because gratitude allowed me to find the light, the love, and the lessons, not the punishment, the blame, the shame, and the justification that most people find in those type of circumstances.
Lainie Rowell: What I hear you saying, and please, correct me if I misunderstood, but you still had this grateful disposition while you were going through these terrible, unfortunate, I mean obviously tremendous loss of money and all the things, and I've read your book and I know how that impacted you personally, but having that grateful disposition was what helped you get out of that more quickly.
Is that fair to say?
David Meltzer: Absolutely. In fact, what's so interesting about what you're asking is the word quickly more than anything else, because what I derive from that experience of understanding gratitude was that time was the only quantitative measurement that I could utilize in order to facilitate the progress that I was creating in my life.
The propulsion, all of that promotion, time was the only variable that I could utilize in order to see the progress. Because one of the things about good behavior, like gratitude, and bad behavior, like looking into blame, shame, and justification, punishment, void, shortages, and obstacles, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, All of these different things, is that good behavior creates an instant result that we can't, as humans, be aware of, and bad behavior creates a result as well, instantly, that we can't be aware of.
You see, good behavior, through gratitude, creates good progress. And bad behavior, through blame, shame, and justification, creates bad progress, but human nature doesn't allow us to be aware of it. And so we have to utilize the faith of finding the light, the love, and the lessons. And I utilize time that each time I felt angry or cheated, manipulated, or I felt an interference between me and my potential, I use time to get back to gratitude. I use time to say, you know what? People ask, well, how do you measure gratitude? How do you measure guilt, resentment, offense, separateness, inferiority, superiority, anger, anxiety, worry? All of these things are interfering with my best self.
And I'd say, you know, I just would see how much time am I spending in that wasteful emotion. And I'd use gratitude in order to facilitate the acceleration, aggregation, and the compounding of outcomes that I wanted, not that I don't want, or that was missing, or I didn't have. You see, one of the biggest energy crises that gratitude solves.
And it's one that many people don't think of when they think of an energy crisis is the difference between I am and this is what I want people to think I am. And gratitude shortens the amount of time that we spend in this is what I want people to think I am or this is what people think they want for me and removes it into I am.
When you're gracious, instead of trying to get more happy, more healthy, more wealthy, and more worthy, we live in a place of I am. I am happy. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am worthy. What am I doing to interfere with it? That's what gratitude does for us. It allows us to find that light, to find the love in that, and also to learn the lessons, so we shorten the amount of time, as you stated, quickly to get back to our higher self, to the love, light, and lessons that we were born as co creators with.
Lainie Rowell: That's amazing. David, I know meditation is a huge part of your life, 4am every day and as we're talking about time, I'm thinking of how you dedicate this time every single day to meditation. Is gratitude a part of your meditation? Is there some connection there?
David Meltzer: Absolutely. So the idea of meditation and I'm someone that was completely resistant to the idea of meditation. I thought people that meditated were broke, sick, high, living on their mom's couch, dreaming about what they wanted.
And I did understand, but I had to learn one, to sit still, two, to be quiet, three, to be aware. And now understanding how gratitude, through that awareness allows me to transcend the information in order to utilize my highest awareness frequency or vibration during the day. You see, that gratitude is a lens.
There's three lenses that I use in my meditation. One is productivity. How can I provide more value to my community of people that want to help each other and know people that can help each other. How can I be more accessible to that community of people that want to help each other and know people that can help each other?
And how can I access help from those people that want to help each other and know people that can help each other? And then finally, in my meditation, in my awareness, using the lens of gratitude to find the light, the love, and the lessons and the information that is transcended to me when I meditate.
And that's why for me, actually, my day starts the night before with an unwinding routine that puts my mind, my body, and soul in a position of not only recovery, which is obvious to most people why we sleep is to recover, but also to access that information. And I joke around because you know this, Lainie, from my previous experience in sports, both with Leigh Steinberg at Leigh Steinberg Sports and Entertainment and Sports One Marketing with Warren Moon.
I've been around more Hall of Famers than most people on earth, but I myself want to be in a Hall of Fame. And most people laugh when I tell them what Hall of Fame I want to be in. I used to say I wanted to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or the California Sports Hall of Fame. Now I want to be in the Sleep Hall of Fame.
I want to be known as the greatest sleeper of all time. And people laugh, but think about it. What would you rather be? Warren Moon, the first black quarterback in the hall of fame, or the best sleeper ever. A third of my life, I'm the best at. And it also contributes to the other two thirds of my life as well.
So through meditation, through productivity, accessibility, and gratitude absolutely allows me to identify a very simple thing. When I'm at ease, and what's causing me dis ease. physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. You see, in the context of that simple, yet powerful analysis, am I at ease? Am I in gratitude?
Am I in the flow? Am I utilizing all the power that's been given to me? Bob Proctor, my mentor who had passed just recently, Always told me if you ever watched the movie, The Secret, I have more power in my pinky. It would light up all of Manhattan. What do you think you're doing to interfere with it? If you have that much power in your pinky, imagine how much power that you have and you want to unleash that power, then use the power of gratitude to find that light, to find that power, that energy, that love, and those lessons will propel and promote you to a place that you can't even imagine. In fact, when you live in a value add world of abundance, you are unlimited. And one of the things about living in the infinite, the abundant, the unlimited life that you've been granted through gratitude, you can be aware of what limiting beliefs are serving you and what limiting beliefs are deterring you.
Simple concept of ease and dis ease. I am, what am I doing? to interfere, F E A R, with what I am.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, that was a lot of wisdom. I'm still processing it all. A lot of people acknowledge the importance and the power and the promise of gratitude.
But they'll say it here and there. You are very good at here it is, folks, you need to pay attention to this. And you've got things like the 14 Day Gratitude Challenge, which I did, which is lovely. What motivates you to keep inspiring people to make grateful living a way of life?
David Meltzer: I'm on a mission to empower over a billion people to be happy, to make a lot of money, to live in abundance, to help a lot of people, to live in abundance, and to have joy, happiness, passion, purpose, and profitability, to live in abundance. And I have created pragmatic tools to live not only with gratitude, but with forgiveness to give us that ease and accountability to give us control of that ease and effective communication that allows us to raise our awareness of inspiration and to be inspired and to be inspiring.
And so, within my mission, it's so important to me to communicate the dummy tax that I've paid, the lessons that I've learned, to help people get up, get back up, get started, get back started, in order to facilitate the inspiration to identify what they're doing to interfere with their potential, to end the energy crisis between what they are and what they want people to think they are, especially our children, especially with the social silos that exist within social media.
There's so much energy wasted with, I want people to think I am instead of I am. I'm worried about what people think I am instead of what I am. And if I can help through the constructs of gratitude, forgiveness, accountability, and effective communication to give them the daily practices that they can customize and utilize on their own to allow them to figure out how to execute in an ability to enjoy the consistent every day, persistent without quit pursuit of their own potential, not what other people want for them, not what's missing, not what they don't have, but what they want in a trajectory of where they think they want to be or better by utilizing gratitude to give meaning of the past. in alignment with where they want to be or better, not in dis ease or interference of where they want to be or better.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, I could talk to you for hours. Okay, I know that it is your life's mission to empower over a billion people to be happy.
I know you're well on your way to doing that. I'm going to make sure that for those who are listening on the podcast, And in the article too, we'll make sure that we've got dmelter.com and you're @davidmelter on Instagram and you actually have it very clear on your website... you can connect to me this way, this way, this way, this way.
You're very accessible. I know that's important to you. That's one of those lenses. And so any final thoughts before I let you get on with your day?
David Meltzer: I want to tell you that through gratitude, it allows you to learn the ability to learn to love everything, to find the light, the love, I get choked up, the lessons and everything, because if you learn to love everything, it will tell you all its secrets.
And it's those secrets that allow you to live at ease, to enjoy the omniscient, all powerful, all knowing source of energy that will protect, promote you at all times. Utilize gratitude as that arsenal to live your life to its fullest. Use Gratitude. It's free. It takes 0. 1 seconds. I'd be happy to send you my Gratitude Challenge or even my book.
I will sign it. I will send it to you. I will pay for the book and shipping. Just email me directly david@dmeltzer.com. For me, it's always offering the community their free Friday training, which I've been doing for 24 years. Started there at Leigh Steinberg's office on Newport Center Drive, and I am probably the only one out there that sends my actual book.
So if anyone enjoys the article or wants to continue to thrive, I'd love them to come to my free Friday trainings virtually or allow me to send my book out to them.
Remember everyone, be more interested than interesting. Be kind to your future self and do good deeds.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, that's lovely. David, I am so grateful for this gift you've given me of your time and the fact that you are with me on the importance, power and promise of gratitude. .
Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Take care.
David Meltzer: Thank you. Thank you, Lainie.